Cascade Network for Ambae

We start at the beginning:

stories create value

The Cascade Network strengthens the work of Further Arts in supporting the people of Ambae record their own stories and culture as they are forced to leave their homelands.

Recently The Independent ran the story of how Further Arts‘ cultural documentation during the Ambae evacuations of 2017 supported resilience and nurtured confidence. The people’s Paramount Chief, Benuel Garae, the President of the Ambae Island Council of Chiefs, has invited Further Arts to help the community document the stories of Ambae on their own terms as they face permanent evacuation due to the unstable activity of the island’s volcano.

The Cascade Network looks to support this documentation mission with cutting edge immersive techniques and the development of a digital network to hold the immersive recordings in collaboration with Vanuatu Cultural Centre. We will use techniques that emphasise accessibility and embodied communication (eg. Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, 360 Recordings and photogrammetry of the island itself) towards the making of an immersive web portal - accessible to mobile phones on Vanuatu - to hold and encourage cultural expression after permanent evacuation.

As the people relocate to neighbouring islands there are serious questions around resources, work and how to continue creating value to sustain the displaced.

The Cascade Network is working with network technologies so that the specific value that a story creates can find digital life and also be inscribed in an object. These objects can be embedded with the coding of their own digital provenance creating possibilites for hybrid forms evolving craft practices and value exchange.

We have developed bespoke prototype technology built on open source RSA Public/Private key encryption, and utilising digital signatures and hash functions to establish and leverage digital provenance. This is essentially the same technology that underlies blockchain, but is open source and public, and can enable further features and flows of knowledge and value. Inherent within this work is creating with open tools that can allow for further evolutions and the potential for additional functionality to grow to support the community with network solutions.

The physical object itself is the output of dynamic processes of ICH (in other words: creative currency.)

The functions (the rules, the codes, the laws) of digital provenance are performed by the people of Ambae eg. through the production of woven pandanus mats which are patterned with traditional dyes.

The system does not exist to create assets for speculation on the Crypto markets, but to mirror and support the logic underpinning forms of creativity indigenous to Ambae eg. creating value through the weaving of pandanus mats.

The value created is an emergent currency, which requires no Reserve Bank or Mint. It facilitates the distributed allocation of resources and is operated by participants in the community.

The design of this system allows for value to be attached to cultural products in ways that are being defined and determined locally (i.e by the Ambae people). The details of how this value exchange would be set up is community driven and there is flexibility inscribed which allows choices to be made around what to share and what not to share. For example, it is possible for the community to decide to release digital traceable objects reflective of craft whilst limiting access to recorded local knowledge, and sharing this with only the community network.

Choice and consent is the domain of the community: the Cascade Network’s emphasis on local nodes and collaborative workshops is to strengthen the basis for a network of culture and knowledge on the terms and under the direction of the Ambae community.

Community, Ecology and Technology Innovation

The alternative currencies of Vanuatu - the trade of Shell Money on some islands and the pandanus practices indigenous to Ambae - encode a rich historical understanding of innovating value systems. The Cascade meets what already thrives on the islands with collaborative workshops and technical support so that community knowledge is supported to direct the logic and design of a digital system to facilitate flows of cultural value.

Technology networks can potentially give formalised support to vastly extend the reach of cultural creativity. Defining how value will be organised is a creative act and belongs to the community of Ambae. The project seeks to support this sensitively through the Cascade Network’s partners Further Arts and the decades of experience facilitating community meetings and creativity.